Basketball? Huh? What? Final Who? Bueller?

I know not what you speak of... this NCA... A is it?

Yeah. So.... About those brackets...

I had two. One from my head: fairly rational with a few bold and risky choices, written in black Sharpie and entered into a friend's office pool. And one bracket from my heart: scribbled in pencil with many eraser marks, buried somewhere in a stack of magazines in the living room. An extremely delusional little bracket, but warm and fuzzy and had it come true, would have brought about peace and harmony to all planetary systems.

The one from my head had Tennessee and UCLA playing in the final game and Tennessee losing by two points. Of course I was counting on the fact that my Vols would be out of their shooting slump and actually make it past the Sweet Sixteen...

Yeah. So... Let's move on...

The bracket from my heart had Tennessee winning (hello? were you really pondering that one at all?) and an appearance in the Final Four by a Davidson, Austin Peay, Belmont or Western Kentucky.

But no. All four number one seeds are now in the Final Four. Yawn.

And my two brackets? Headed to the great recycling bin in the sky. Sure, I guess UCLA could still win it all and "technically" I would have picked them, but where's the fun in that?

At least we still have the women's tournament. It's on cable though, so until we get a little further along I'm happy with listening to the Lady Vols on the radio.

Sunday night I listened to the end of the TNLV / Notre Dame game on the radio. While doing that I had the TV on PBS (waiting for the replay of Sense and Sensibility, of course). BBC news was on and for a brief moment I had it on mute with the closed captioning. And I tried to read British newscaster commentary while listening to Southern basketball commentary. And then a tiny aneurysm began to form in my head...

I should have just turned off the TV, but not wanting to completely back down from a challenge, I only turned off the CC. Then a story came on about cricket teams (or is it clubs?) in the India Premiere League and I quickly realized that there was not a need for any captioning, closed or otherwise.

There were clips of India Premiere League teams (IPL for those of you not in the know...) on the field doing things and then clips of fans watching cricket games in bars and restaurants, cheering on their teams. And then clips of people in business clothes with laptops, grouped around tables in a hotel ballroom. Someone at a podium would announce something and a table of people would cheer. One table represented the team from Mumbai. Another table was from the Mohali team - the "Punjab Kings," as they are known. I think. Maybe. The team is owned by a Bollywood actress. Preity something. And in the clips from her interview she seemed a little irked.

I'm not quite sure, but I would be willing to bet that Mumbai got a higher seed in their tournament than Mohali - even though their strength of schedule, conference record and league standing are waaay better. And now instead of getting matched up with some easy team like Delhi, they're going to have to face that bad-ass team from Bangalore and she is SO NOT happy about it.

I feel your pain Preity. I feel your pain.

The universal language is supposed to be math. But I think its sports. The only thing I know about cricket is that I think they wear white and take breaks to drink tea. I probably know even less about India. And I may not have interpreted that news story correctly, but I could relate to every scene. The passion. The enthusiasm. The desire to compulsively shout obscenities at a television screen.

And now I'm kind of wondering if there's a bracket and an office pool somewhere for the IPL...

If so, I'm picking Mohali to go all the way.

Go Punjab Kings! Go Lady Vols!